Continuation Part Six: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[kwill]

Cm’on, here it’s just a reality check.
If Amanda Knox was an upper class buisness woman above 30, with a well-paid job, living with a husband ad children, a regular social life with her acquaitned and relatives, who would have dinner every night at 9 pm, in a cool apartment in some other neighborhood downtown… then, her profile and lifestile would appear ‘not compatible’ with a scenario of her dating Rudy Guede for a casual drug-fuelled sex party at a students’ house in via della Pergola.

You've successfully invented a persona who would not be likely to date Rudy Guede for a casual drug-fueled sex party. This is not difficult.

Amanda Knox was a 20-year old whom Sollecito described as “only interested in pleasure” and completely detached from reality, who described her student life as “excessive”.

Clever, but no cigars. She was an exchange student, enrolled in foreign university to earn credits toward a degree that was very important to her. Why do you leave off the information that she worked at multiple jobs for many months to earn money so that she could pay for this privilege? Why do you take Raffeale's words out of context, and why do you trust him at all, since you seem convinced that he has spent six years covering up for a murderer?

She is a person who would drift around Europe looking for fun

Seriously? She was enrolled, going to classes, and working toward earning a very difficult degree.

, would have casual sex with people he met on a train and skip her house cleaning tasks.

Young women do have sex with people, on trains, on planes, and all kinds of places. Some of them also don't know that European toilets require special attention. Does this make them more likely to be murderers? Surely you can do better than this.

Witnesses described her as having an attitude of showing off to get others attention, being perceived as inopportune, often annoying and un-empathic, making monologues about herself instead of conversation

Who, exactly, has said such things? Are they people who know her well and who have spent a great deal of time with her? Or are they people who formed their opinions once she'd been accused of murder? Why do you attach more significance to the latter vs. the former? Could it be that you have some kind of bias against this woman?

, as having something compulsive in her bringing men at home (she was even seductive and jealous about Meredith’s boyfriend).

What do you imply by "compulsive" here? How do you know that she was seductive and jealous? These are absurd implications and not worthy of one who pretends to be a sophisticated analyst of this case.

She praised the lifestyle of ‘casual’ sex outside any relation regardless of boyfriends.

Many women enjoy casual sex, as do many men. What is the problem with this?

She knew Guede since at least a month before she met Sollecito, and Guede used to say “I’d like to screw her”.

Is Guede's behavior her responsibility? (Oh, wait. That is the heart of this case for the people who want to blame her for Meredith's death.)

She had a part time casual job where she performed poorly so that Lumumba immediately changed her mansions.

This has no meaning. Please check your vocabulary.

She had some psychological issues, obvious from details like her copying Laura’s piercings.

Psychological issues . . . obvious from . . . copying Laura's piercings. What are you implying? You claim to be a person who speaks plainly. What are these issues? Does every young woman who imitates a style she admires have these issues, or is it only Amanda? The fashion industry would collapse without this kind of imitation, by the way.

She admitted to be smoking a lot of weed that night and to be together with a guy (Sollecito) who was recorded at the Prefect office of Bari as a heavy drug consumer, and recorded at his middle school for having injured a girl with scissors.

What on earth are you talking about?

Her phone number was in the cell phone of a drug dealer and they exchanged telephone contacts (the drug dealer in question was accused of giving drug to female students in exchange of sex).

Once again, you don't how that number got there, you don't know what sort of exchange they had, and yet you dare to imply that Amanda -- an honor student with a plan to graduate -- was trading her body for drugs. Can you possibly understand how offensive that is?

The place where Guede would spend his afternoons was in the midway between her house door and her university, she lived at about 90 meters from there and attended classes at an institute 60 meters beyond there.

Was it her fault that he lived nearby? Was there testimony to the effect that the two of them were seen together? Why not? Wouldn't you think that the fantasy party girl would not have bothered to hide her association with this man, if such a thing had existed?

Guede lived behind via Garibaldi and there she recalls to have met a black man she describes as “beautiful”, and they promised to meet each other again after she would be back from Germany; despite this, she never revealed his name.

Again, you imply something you have not one reason to believe is true. For shame.

Your (folks') objections were that she was not a ‘party girl’ because she was a honor student (a curiously unproven claim, btw) and that the reason and circumstances in which she gave her phone number to the drug dealer are not known in detail.

I think your English is better than you pretend. Her honor student status reflects her very high grades at the University of Washington, and that's not "curiously unproven." You must be an honor student in high school to even be admitted to that university, and even then it's by no means guaranteed that you'll get in. Why does her intellect bother you so much? Why is it so hard to believe that there is NO OTHER explanation for her phone number in a "drug dealer's" cell than that she gave it to him so she could buy drugs -- especially when there is nothing whatsoever to indicate that she ever did anything but smoke marijuana? She had an easy way to get pot from her housemates and from the men who lived downstairs. This makes your implication dishonest and defamatory.

It’s self-evident that such objections are ludicrous.

No. What is self-evident is that you are unable to see anything beyond the imaginary Amanda Knox you have constructed.

You may try to disagree on the interpretation of some of the details listed above, but you can perfectly see the basic data about the person’s profile.

I see the profile of a young woman who is responsible, healthy, intelligent, hard-working, and normal.

The profile of Amanda Knox is just compatible with a scenario where she attended a sexual meeting with Guede at Via della Pergola. Every rational person can see that.

Absurdity. She was at the time spending every night with Raffaele, apparently to the delight of both.

Just say it’s compatible and move on.

The party girl of your imagination does not exist. Just say so and move on. You must do this if you're an honest man, Machiavelli.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Sorry I am not able to cite an original source. I read most of the books in English about this case and have given some of them away. I also read many online articles (English).

There would have been many young people at the disco the night of Rudy's alleged dancing through a moment of silence, so it would seem possible that a reporter (Dempsy?) could have spoken with someone who said they were there and observed it.

Anything's possible, but this story does seem fairly improbable, doesn't it? People do weird things sometimes, but boogying during a minute's silence for your victim while a crowd of people stare at you would be an incredibly weird thing to do.

 

[Diocletus]

I have no idea.
Meredith had actually won an Erasmus scholarship, a real one, so it is a fact she was entitled to that.
I think she had a different lifestyle anyway, she was a different kind of person.

That's true. You can tell just by considering the two girls' boyfriends.

 

[Strozzi]

This is the letter (multiple sheets, a "diary") Sollecito writes to his father about Amanda (he wrote the letter in Nov. 2007):

(...)

Thank you for providing this. Earlier this evening (it is now Wednesday 9:23 pm where I live (Washington DC), I thought it would be an early evening. That is not to be the case.

I will run Raffaele's writings through a translator. I realize that some of the meaning may be lost or distorted in the process.

I appreciate your willingness to share your views, in spite of the quick reaction it has provoked from others in the crowd. I do want to know what you think because, although our views of the case are diametrically opposed, you are a critical observer of the case and your views are probably representative of the views of the authorities who have had to deal with the horrible murder.

 

[yimyammer]

Yes, no car was hit but these are details, Grinder. It was a rather wild party, people are not supposed to throw rocks on the street, no matter what consequence happens or doesn't happen. I think it was not a "noise" ticket, I think it's called 'disturbance' rather than noise, and think I it's not a "ticket", since it requires police minutes and report, and was on a police call.
But the details of the incident are obviously irrelevant. It was a party where something went out of contol and Knox was attending that party. It's just an element of personal history. She might have been a honour student (albeit, this claim is unproven) but she was not in a honourable situation that night.

This party sounds tame compared to some of the crap I and my friends pulled at that age and none of us have come within a million miles of committing a murder or even desiring to do so.

It strikes me as incredibly inconsistent to ask one to give weight to this event yet shrug their shoulders as if it was nothing (like the Italian Law Enforcement apparently did.) when Rudy was caught in a nursery he had broken into and was found with a knife he stole from the kitchen, a set of keys and other items.

It's remarkable people can view the same events so differently.

 

[yimyammer]

I provided Candace Dempsey's book as a cite. Where she got it, I do not know

http://books.google.com/books?id=1q...=rudy guede dancing moment of silence&f=false

thx!

 

[Strozzi]

Anything's possible, but this story does seem fairly improbable, doesn't it? People do weird things sometimes, but boogying during a minute's silence for your victim while a crowd of people stare at you would be an incredibly weird thing to do.

I would expect Rudy to be a psychological basket-case following his murder of Meredith. Not hearing the DJ or misunderstanding what others are doing would not surprise me. He could have been in a trance or on drugs.

 

[RandyN]

Bad luck??? I don't believe Stefanoni went to the house in Perugia on Dec. 18 to collect the bra clasp on the off chance that it might have Raffele's DNA on it. The police and prosecutor needed physical evidence to pin the crime on Raffaele. Their shoeprint claims were about to be exposed as false. There is no way that Stefanoni was going to fetch the bra clasp, bring it back to her lab in Rome, and discover it had nothing of Raffaele's on it.

The interesting thing is that Stefanoni has never been scrutinized before the way she is now. (This is due to the power of the internet.) Her poor evidence handling, collection, and storage techniques; pseudo-scientific ("too low, too low") lab processes; false data interpretation; and "trust me - I'm objective" claims are being scrutinized and exposed for the first time.

Videos of her work and transcripts of her testimony will eventually be used in high school and university lab science curriculum as examples of what not to do.

Nor do I! The official reason for the return should be common knowledge and yet for the life of me I dont recall the question being asked or the reason being offered for this suspicious return.

That said I have always wondered why the defense failed to flesh out the reasoning for the Dec 18 return to the cottage. They had Stefanoni on the stand...seems like a logical question that NEEDED TO BE ASKED!

In AK book she mentions that the police return to the cottage (Nov 5,6,7,8???) to get her a pair of shoes and a dress IIRC. This appears to be well after the departure of the CSI...and so the whole "sealed crime scene" seems to be one more provable police and prosecutor lie.

 

[Mary_H]

This party sounds tame compared to some of the crap I and my friends pulled at that age and none of us have come within a million miles of committing a murder or even desiring to do so.

It strikes me as incredibly inconsistent to ask one to give weight to this event yet shrug their shoulders as if it was nothing (like the Italian Law Enforcement apparently did.) when Rudy was caught in a nursery he had broken into and was found with a knife he stole from the kitchen, a set of keys and other items.

It's remarkable people can view the same events so differently.

Excellent point, yimyammer. Fun fact: Mignini found out about Amanda's citation by reading it in the Daily Mail. I'm not sure he even bothered to get the actual record from Seattle Police before bringing the incident up in court.

 

[Diocletus]

This party sounds tame compared to some of the crap I and my friends pulled at that age and none of us have come within a million miles of committing a murder or even desiring to do so.

It strikes me as incredibly inconsistent to ask one to give weight to this event yet shrug their shoulders as if it was nothing (like the Italian Law Enforcement apparently did.) when Rudy was caught in a nursery he had broken into and was found with a knife he stole from the kitchen, a set of keys and other items.

It's remarkable people can view the same events so differently.

Good point. It's not even as bad as napoleoni and her thugs slashing tires and vandalizing property. Or migini abusing his office. Or the cops hitting a prisoner. Or disclosing a prisoners medical records. Or destroying/fabricating evidence.

If only the authorities in Perugia behaved no worse than Knox. Instead, their behavior is compatible with the mafia.

 

[Supernaut]

I would expect Rudy to be a psychological basket-case following his murder of Meredith. Not hearing the DJ or misunderstanding what others are doing would not surprise me. He could have been in a trance or on drugs.

You, Kevin and Kwill keep making me lol.

Excellent!

(Yes, I am a sick man, I admit it).

 

[RandyN]

Yes, no car was hit but these are details, Grinder. It was a rather wild party, people are not supposed to throw rocks on the street, no matter what consequence happens or doesn't happen. I think it was not a "noise" ticket, I think it's called 'disturbance' rather than noise, and think I it's not a "ticket", since it requires police minutes and report, and was on a police call.
But the details of the incident are obviously irrelevant. It was a party where something went out of contol and Knox was attending that party. It's just an element of personal history. She might have been a honour student (albeit, this claim is unproven) but she was not in a honourable situation that night.



I already did so, maybe a year ago or so.



Not on the internet.



I have no idea.
Meredith had actually won an Erasmus scholarship, a real one, so it is a fact she was entitled to that.
I think she had a different lifestyle anyway, she was a different kind of person.

Actually Miss Kercher's application was refused. She had to appeal this decision and was later allowed admittance...

Pity that the Italian police failed to arrest Guede when they had him in hand in Milan. Something that always gets lost about this story. Certainly Miss Kercher would be alive today.

Do I detect a motive for prosecutor and police to concoct a fact-less false case against two innocent persons? A story so wild that one more easily forgets the "little" police blunder of failing to jail their informant perhaps? Who gave the order to the Milan police to put Guede on a train back to Perugia? Find that name and you find the co-conspirator to this mess of a case.

Not exactly follow the money...but in Italy follow the fool is close enough.

 

[Supernaut]

Excellent point, yimyammer. Fun fact: Mignini found out about Amanda's citation by reading it in the Daily Mail. I'm not sure he even bothered to get the actual record from Seattle Police before bringing the incident up in court.

Oh yeah! He actually cited it in court! Did he actually brandish a copy of the Mail as he did so? I can't remember.

What a clown!

I remember trying to conjure the image of an English QC waving a copy of a an Italian tabloid newspaper, reporting hearsay, at an American defendant in a UK courtroom, and demanding that they affirm or deny that what was printed in it was nothing but the gospel truth.

I'm just trying to think how likely it would be that a UK judge would allow a prosecutor to use this "line of questioning". About the same as a meteor hitting the courthouse, I'd say.

 

[andreajo]

I agree, Supernaut. I like all our new posters -- kwill, andreajo, Strozzi, just to name a few. They are insightful and have the JREF "in a friendly and lively way ethos" down pat. GreyFox and NancyS, too, although they have been around awhile.

Thanks! I am glad that I drummed up the courage to join and post after all the weeks of reading. I am learning a lot and having fun.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Anything's possible, but this story does seem fairly improbable, doesn't it? People do weird things sometimes, but boogying during a minute's silence for your victim while a crowd of people stare at you would be an incredibly weird thing to do.

Actually it kind of rings true. That's how they originally zeroed in on the guys who did the hi-fi murders. They were cutting up at a police briefing delivered to the men at an Air Force Base. They called attention to themselves, so the cops investigated and found a slew of evidence tying them to the crime.

But that was an engineered psy-op that actually worked. In the story about Guede, I see it as could be true, could be total fiction, and it doesn't matter much.

 

[Strozzi]

Machiavelli, I just realized that if you are at home in Italy it is 4:15 am. I'm glad you are online (but also sorry for you that you are not asleep).

 

[Mary_H]

Randy, I have seen references to Mach 1 and Mach 2 but not understood the meaning. Do you believe two people are sharing/using the same JREF account to post under the name of Machiavelli? Your post above implies one is someone you refer to as Mach 2 and the other is Andrea Vogt. Am I understanding that correctly?

It could be that Mach 2 the Italian is the commentator and that he is drawing on written comments or questions given to him earlier or in real time by Andrea Vogt or another native American who of course uses American idioms.

If they are a pair working together (especially in real time), could it be that Mach 2 the Italian is Vogt's Italian husband (Ph.D. from a US university) and Mach 1 is Andrea Vogt herself?

It's against JREF rules to casually accuse someone of sharing their account with other people, although it is okay to bring it to the moderators' attention for an investigation, if you think you have evidence. I am pretty sure Machiavelli and Andrea Vogt are not related.

Over time, some of us have noticed differences between the tones of posts by Machiavelli. Once, he and I were engaged in a debate here on JREF and all of a sudden I was debating someone with perfect English skills, still using Machiavelli's avatar.

Machiavelli also goes by the avatar Yummi, which he used on Candace Dempsey's site years ago. His English has improved dramatically since then.

Machiavelli, Candace told me that Peggy and Kermit used to strong-arm you into letting them use your accounts. Is there any truth to that claim?

 

[Strozzi]

It's against JREF rules to casually accuse someone of sharing their account with other people, although it is okay to bring it to the moderators' attention for an investigation, if you think you have evidence. I am pretty sure Machiavelli and Andrea Vogt are not related.

Over time, some of us have noticed differences between the tones of posts by Machiavelli. Once, he and I were engaged in a debate here on JREF and all of a sudden I was debating someone with perfect English skills, still using Machiavelli's avatar.

Machiavelli also goes by the avatar Yummi, which he used on Candace Dempsey's site years ago. His English has improved dramatically since then.

Machiavelli, Candace told me that Peggy and Kermit used to strong-arm you into letting them use your accounts. Is there any truth to that claim?

Mach, don't answer that. As your attorney I ask you to not incriminate yourself. And yes, this is being recorded.

 

[andreajo]

Good point. It's not even as bad as napoleoni and her thugs slashing tires and vandalizing property. Or migini abusing his office. Or the cops hitting a prisoner. Or disclosing a prisoners medical records. Or destroying/fabricating evidence.

If only the authorities in Perugia behaved no worse than Knox. Instead, their behavior is compatible with the mafia.

And tapping the phones...

 

[Strozzi]

Mach, don't answer that. As your attorney I ask you to not incriminate yourself. And yes, this is being recorded.

I have been reading this board for 20 months and only recently began posting. I paid a lot of attention early on to what Machiavelli wrote. Then he went silent for a long time. I missed his commentary. Then one day he began posting again and I was actually very happy to see it. Because I do pay attention to what Machiaveilli has to say - even though we view the case from opposite sides.